


Blood of Royals

by Raikishi



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Assassination Attempt(s), Character Study, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Protectiveness, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raikishi/pseuds/Raikishi
Summary: “Buy you a drink?” he asks a Fodlan girl and she tilts her head at him, expression unreadable.“You couldn’t afford what I’d like,” she says after a long moment.“You won’t even let me try?”“No.”Byleth is a mercenary for hire Claude can't afford. Doesn't stop him trying.Claudeleth Day 3: royals
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 133





	Blood of Royals

They first meet when he is young and drunk. 

He is stupidly careless in a way he had learned long ago not to be. But he is free of the palace and its many hidden dangers for the first time in a long while and he wants to fill his mind with cheer and simple warmth. He has his older cousins for companions, the two of them quiet and sullen. Unlikely to play the games of royalty their parents would, so he fancies himself safe in their company. Thinks himself capable of outwitting them if need be. 

He doesn’t pay much attention as they roam the open night markets, more interested in charming what he can from the stand owners and marketgoers. By the time the moon has risen bright and full, he is pleasantly tipsy on bought wine and free of his companions.

“Buy you a drink?” he asks a Fodlan girl and she tilts her head at him, expression unreadable.

“You couldn’t afford what I’d like,” she says after a long moment.

“You won’t even let me try?” 

“No,” and then leans back, hand dropping to her sword as she stares him down, a dare on her face and a threat in her body.

Mercenary for hire. The realization strikes him like a blow. The back of his neck prickles as he notes the strength in her arms and the tension in her body as she levels a gaze at him hard enough he shudders. Slowly, he licks his lips, as he starts to sober.

He should walk away now. His many cousins, aunts, and uncles had too many hired swords under their employ solely for the purpose of hunting him. Some of them crueler than others with a taste for bloodlust.

He tracks his gaze over the firm cut of her biceps and the deceptively languid way she holds herself. Knows she could leap to her feet and slash his throat if she so desired, but she appears more interested in doing nothing but people watch and waste time. 

Perhaps she was free still. Willing to be bought.

“I thought all mercenaries had a price –“

His words stall at the light caress of her fingers on his neck, stiffening as if it were a dagger. Her eyes track his hand as he twitches towards the knife in his sleeve, a little touch of amusement in her gaze. She traces the curve of his jaw and he holds himself still as a statue, his heart pounding, half expecting a knife to his ribs before she tugs his braid sharply. 

“Go home,” she says removing her hand and the fine points of her fingers leave a ghost mark on his throat that burns him through.

He affects a pout at her before drawing away, throwing his hands up in surrender. Her gaze follows him off, scorching on his back as her touch had been but when he looks back to find her, she is gone. A merc who – 

A hand grabs for his jaw.

He slashes at the back of it with his knife, his shout muffled into the calloused palm as thick digits dig into his jaw and neck. To their credit, they do not flinch away from the pain. Another hand seizes the blade in Claude’s hand, wrenches it from his grip with a decisive tug. 

From the corner of his eye, Claude glimpses dark hair and a familiar face. A nurse in his aunt’s service, sent from her homeland to keep her company. Attendant to one of the cousins he’s brought today. 

Twisting, he kicks blind, aiming at her knees and then yelps as she throws him to the ground, her elbow digging painfully in his back as his head knocks the sidewalk. 

“What’s he paying you?” he spits, biting his tongue as she clocks him in the head, his vision swimming as she drags him into the dark. He gasps, struggling to breathe around the pain, “I can offer more.”

“I want only your life,” she says, her voice saccharine and taunting, “Before you taint the throne with your blood.”

Ah. A purist. 

He twists sharply in her grip, black spots in his vision at the sudden movement, kicking high for her face, heel catching her jaw and she snarls at him in anger. It’s not enough to deter her but just enough for him to squirm to his feet, kicking away from her in a hurry.

“Coward,” she swears at him, and then a rope snares his ankle.

She is on him like a bloodhound, twisting his arms high behind his back as she straps ropes around them.

“I knew you would run,” she says, “Full of coward’s blood.”

He spits in her face for that and with a furious snarl, she punches him in the jaw. Knocks his head against stone but he manages to get a hand on her wrist, popping the cap of one of his rings to sink a needle into her arm. Immediately her touch goes loose and flimsy, a twisted look of outrage in her face as he darts away from her, something like a howl working at her mouth as he –

Crashes into someone familiar.

His heart drops as he looks the Fodlan woman in the face.

No. Surely she was not. His aunt wouldn’t deign to pay for Fodlan mercs –

“Oh, apologies for my prince. He is prone to tantrums and fits. Unaccustomed to Almyra, I should say,” his assailant says, clutching her arm to hide the unnatural drop as she approaches. She smiles at first but then her expression sours, curdling like milk as recognition comes over her, “Oh. The Ashen Demon comes to Almyra.”

Claude shudders as a hand curls over his cheek, the touch cool against the throbbing bruise starting to form. There is little trace of concern in the mercenary’s eyes as she studies his face and he latches onto that desperately.

“Get me away from her,” he says, “I can pay you.“

“Please,” his assailant says impatiently, “I don’t know how they work in Fodlan but we don’t poach in Almyra.”

“Whatever you want,” Claude says between clenched teeth, “Coin. Jewels – 

“Hand him over. I want no trouble from you and I imagine it’s the same for you. We can both be on our way. Our pockets –“

“Ale. I can afford it, I assure –“

“You want no trouble like him, demon or not. It’s not worth –“

Her head falls from her shoulders with a single swing Claude doesn’t see, his face tucked into the curve of the Ashen Demon’s throat, a hiccup caught in his mouth. She’s _fast._ Terrifyingly so. He’d barely seen her sword leave the scabbard and neither had his assailant. He glimpses the head, bile rising fast to his throat before the Ashen Demon turns him away from the sight.

“Prince, are you?” she asks, examining the bruises forming on his face, her thumb cool and gentle over the dull pain on his right cheek. He leans unsteadily into her touch, unable to help himself. 

“Perhaps you _can_ afford what I’d like,” she says, her tone light as she guides him back to the crowded markets, “I want the sweet wine you royals drink. A barrel of the kind not sold in these markets.”

“I can give you two,” he says dizzily and she looks at him with something like amusement, “And a warehouse full for you to come under my employ.”

“Oh,” she says and there is laughter in her voice, “You couldn’t afford my loyalty. Be content with just tonight, greedy little princeling.”

* * *

When they next meet, he discovers her name.

Byleth.

And the fact that she is working under his mother.

“Am I?” she asks as he hurries to catch up to her. 

“You just left her chambers.”

“I’m visiting a friend.”

“You’re a friend,” he says flatly.

“Yes.”

“Of the queen.”

“And the prince, it seems,” she says, “He comes running to greet me each time I appear.”

Claude blinks at her and then laughs, loud and incredulous, before he grabs for her arm, “Then spend some time with me, my friend. I’m eager to know what you’ve been up to since we last parted.”

“Oh, much the same, rescuing maidens from dark alleys and unkind strangers,” she says, “And you? Drinking yourself to blindness for those following close on your heels?”

“I was hoping to lure a knight,” he says, “Who refuses drink when freely given but will readily extort it from a man under duress.”

She doesn’t quite smile at that but there’s a little twist to her lips he marks as a victory. It lightens the stoicism in her eyes, makes him realize just how close in age they are and he leans into her space – 

She throws him against the wall, pinning his arm high behind his back, her voice a growl against his ear, sending shivers down as his spine. It’s a terrible time to discover a kink. 

“Let it go,” she says and he drops the letter he’d pilfered from her pocket into her waiting hand, hiding his face as his heart hammers in his chest. 

“Ow, is that a way to treat a friend?” he says, pretending to roll out his wrist as he ducks her gaze. 

“If they betray my trust, they deserve that and then some.”

“I don’t have your trust,” he says, “I couldn’t afford it. But apparently my mother can.”

He nods at the letter. The seal is already broken. He glimpses his mother’s codes and a name. One of the cousins who’d accompanied him to the night market a month ago. Who’d sent an expensive wine and a letter of remorse for losing Claude that night and allowing him to come to harm. The letter, Claude had kept and the wine, he had thrown away. It’d killed a eunuch and two maids in his charge. His mouth curls at the memory. He’d warned all those in his employ not to try food and drink from his cousins.

They should understand the blood politics of royalty. 

He glances at Byleth, imagining her emerging from the shadows as his assailant had done a month prior. No doubt, much for efficiently. She doesn’t look to be the type to allow her targets a chance to fight back.

“Is she sending you for vengeance?”

“Only a visit,” Byleth says.

“What if I pay you to ignore it?” he asks.

She stops. Tilts her head at him. 

“Two bottles of wine gifted from Sreng. Strong enough to strip the skin of your throat,” he says, holding his hand out for the letter, “I’ll speak to my mother. You’ll never hear a whisper of incompetence or slander against your name. A job done without doing.”

She stares at him for a long moment, too stoic for shock but not stoic enough to mask her surprise. 

“You feel no need for retribution?”

“He’s already fled,” Claude says with an easy smile, “Too fearful for his life to come back. He won’t ever lay claim on my throne and it’s one less skeleton for me to kick from my path. I’m satisfied as is.”

“Is that so,” Byleth muses, looking at him as if she were trying to puzzle him out, the full weight of her attention heady and powerful. She drops the letter in his hand and he grins at her, tucking the seriousness away.

“And another four bottles of Empire ale to switch your loyalty?” 

She flicks him in the forehead with a little huff. 

* * *

“Come here often?” he asks, waving the poisoned dagger he’d drawn from his pillow in greeting, pretending the thin film of another’s blood on the edge does not bother him. Pretending his heart does not pound and his stomach does not churn at the sight of the man gasping for his last breath.

Byleth nods at him and then hoists the would-be assassin on her shoulder.

“Wait,” he blurts out before he can stop himself, “Do you mean to leave so quickly? It’s been six months, my friend.”

Byleth tilts her head at him and then indicates the man thrown over her shoulder, “Do you want blood in your room?”

The implication of death sends a shiver down his spine but he persists. He snares her arm before she can disappear, pretends the smile he puts to his mouth is not strained and fragile and that his voice does not waver as he speaks, “Promise you will hurry back?”

When she does not reply, he draws out a box beneath his bed, revealing two bottles of wine he’d been sent a week ago from Brigid. 

“Promise?” he asks again and she slowly nods. 

It is a long while before she returns. He does not try to sleep. Instead, he spends the time pretending he is not counting the seconds and flipping through books unseeing.

Byleth announces her presence with a deliberate step on his tiles, the motion awkward enough to know its purposeful as she lays her weight on the single loose tile in his room. It’s a small gesture but it makes him smile and he does not have to strain to keep it on his face. 

She’s brought a glass and he shuffles aside to make space for her on his bed, watching her as she looks over his selection of wine. She hasn’t changed in the time they’ve been apart. Same steady stoicism. An easy constant as sturdy as an oak.

He blinks when she hands him the glass, marveling at the bit of wine she’d deigned to pour him and then chuckles when she drinks straight from the bottle. He matches her sip until his glass is empty. She’d given him just enough to shake the tightest knots his shoulder and she does not offer to refill it. Instead, she plucks at his books, squinting at the pictures as she flips through.

“The King is not nearly so grand,” she says, frowning at the pictures, “And the Emperor much shorter.”

“You’ve seen them? he asks, rolling so he can lay his head in her lap and to his surprise, she does not shove him off, only sets the book on his chest and continues flipping through, “Former employers?”

She shakes her head.

“I dislike royalty.”

The bland carelessness with which she decrees her distaste here and now, in the very room with the crown prince makes him laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Cackling until his stomach hurts.

“Is that why I cannot afford your loyalty?” he asks and she nods, a little dagger of a smile on her face, a there and gone hint that leaves him craving more. He prods at her cheek when she takes a swig of wine and she frowns, holding a hand to her mouth as she tries not to spit on him, “And what about my mother? Why the exception?”

She considers for a moment and shrugs one shoulder, “She seems interesting. And she does not irk me like the others.”

“Hey,” he touches a hand to his heart in mock insult.

“Yes,” she answers before he can ask, poking him in the nose, “You irk me terribly.”

“You have it confused, my sweet mercenary, the word is ‘delight’ but I can forgive your Almyran. Such a beautiful language is difficult to master when your native tongue is so clunky and short.”

She grabs a handful of his too-long locks, tugging as she leans close. The wine is sweet and fruity on her breath and for a long hysterical half moment, he thinks he’d like to confirm that he knows what her mouth would taste like. That he could do it just by tilting upwards just a hair. 

“Irk. Annoy. Irritate,” she says, her pronunciation flawless and he declares he is cut to the core as he curls into her lap.

The threat of the night passes over him as they pour over his books. Byleth says nothing of the fact that they are all of Fodlan. The other half of his blood only a mountain range away but unreachable to him as the moon. She shares idle stories of fishing and hunting. Of her time in Kingdom, Empire, and Alliance. Of a carefree life he does not quite understand. If she notices the way her words and company warm him through and still the tremble in his shoulders and hands, she says nothing of it.

“Why do you dislike royalty?” is the last thing he asks, his words too quiet even in the still night, drifting away from him as he’s lulled into sleep.

“I think you know,” she says after a moment so long he does not think she will answer at first.

He is drawn too close to sleep to respond, falling further away beneath the gentle caress of her fingers. The subtle hint of wine cool against the bridge of his nose as she leans over him, “Good night, princeling.”

* * *

“I’m going to Fodlan,” he tells her one afternoon. 

A rare occasion when she is in Almyra and deigns to spend time with him. She glances at him over her teacup and then makes a face at the Almyran pine needle. Or at his words. It’s still difficult to tell, so he chooses to believe the former and gestures the servant over. 

She nods at the mug of ale that is poured for her. 

“Looking for something there?” she asks. 

“It’s my other half and I should know it. As people here should know their neighbors,” he says grandly, adding too much pomp to his words as he sweeps his arms out as if he were pitching snake-oil, “Imagine it, my friend. A world where we do not fear and hate them. Somewhere we can coexist. Accept one another regardless of race and breeding. What a dream that would be.”

“Even your cousins?” 

“Yes,” he says without hesitation and then sighs, thinking on her last mission. He’d not been able to convince his mother a second time to forgive. He shakes the thought, affixing a smile on his face, “Though that would put you out of a job, I suppose.”

Something wistful touches her face as she leans back. A distant look that blows out like a candle.

“Then I shall have to take your offer,” she says with a feigned air of deep regret, hiding a smile as he kicks her under the table.

“Is that what it takes?” he asks, “Fulfilment of a dream? And you said I could not afford your employment.”

He expects her to snark back at him for the pomposity of that statement. To disagree and mock his surety but she does not, only dims her lashes over a small private smile he’s never seen before. Something soft and full of genuine warmth that stops his heart.

And then she breaks her mug over the servant’s head. Claude leaps back, dodging out of the way of the knife that’d reached for his throat like a serpent.

“Well … perhaps it will be some ways off,” Claude huffs as Byleth checks the unconscious man for clues, stomach dropping as he looks over the man again and recognizes him as a trader his aunt had recommended. With a heavy heart, he tells Byleth as much and then frowns at the spilled ale over the man’s head, blood tainting the foam, “I suppose I owe you another.”

“Until you can afford my loyalty,” Byleth confirms and then pauses before she hauls the man off, "I'll be waiting." 

* * *

Claude laughs as she hefts him onto his own wyvern, trailing a bloody hand against the firm set of her jaw as she urges his wyvern skywards, away from Gronder field. From a royal war, he’d truly had no place in.

“Did you miss me?” he asks, tucking his head to her shoulder, exhausted through and through. The weight of the last five years heavy on his back as he presses into her touch. 

“No. I don’t miss fools.”

“Such cruel words from my dearest friend.”

“You fled one royal battle and found another,” she says, her voice strained with … something as she holds him tighter. 

“I did not mean to,” he says, peeking over her shoulder at the still-raging battle. 

He’d seen to it that Hilda had gotten out already and taken Marianne and Lorenz with her. Sees their flags gone from the battle. Leicester is retreating. As he’d bade them to do. He utters a sigh of relief. No more senseless death beaten into the dirt by imperiality.

“But Fodlan and Almyra. We are not so different after all.”

“No, royalty is the same everywhere,” Byleth confirms, holding him closer, her grip firm and sure around his waist as she drops her head briefly to his shoulder, carefully restrained around his wounds. Her words waver a little as she speaks, “I will not always be here to follow you into the dark and guide you back.”

“Yes, you will,” he says sweetly because his head hurts and he wants to indulge in the warmth of Byleth's arms, “So long as I can pay for the journey.” 

He tucks a flask to her belt with a smile that hurts his mouth. 

“Until I can finally afford your employment,” he says and it’s the bloodloss talking, loosening his tongue and making him delirious, “And then you will come with me as Byleth instead of a mercenary. Walk with me side by side.”

He dreams she holds him tighter, her hand careful at the base of his skull, cradling him to her chest as she takes them eastward. Guides him home. 

* * *

“My friend,” he greets her on the balcony with two flutes of champagne. 

Byleth doesn’t move from her watch, her eyes forward, aimed towards the new Fodlan ruler. Someone who’d torn a gash down Claude’s chest the last time they met.

“Here,” Claude holds the flute beneath her nose.

“Payment and permission?” she asks, flicking her gaze from the alcohol to the new ruler and he laughs and bumps their shoulders together, curling into the steady warmth of her.

“Tomorrow we sign the agreement to open borders. Lay down arms at the Locket and open the gates,” he says, exhausted glee in his voice as he takes her hand, kisses her knuckles. 

She says nothing, her gaze on the new ruler until they are called by their vassal and led away. Only then does she look back at Claude, her eyes warm as she takes him in beneath the sunlight. Her fingers curl over his, holding fast as she presses their forehead together.

“Byleth,” he says quietly, heart pounding at the scant few inches between them and she smiles again. That same soft touch that’d warmed him to the core the day he’d told her his dream. 

“Ask me,” she says.

He leans in, crosses those few inches as he’d crossed the borders between countries, his hands around her waist as he draws her into his mouth. Whispers a question against her lips beneath the setting sun. Feeling her answer echo at the core of him, rising with his new dawn. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, fell behind by a day. 
> 
> Also, question for everyone - is there a claudeth discord?
> 
> —-  
> Edited for a few typos (OTL) why I shouldn’t edit half asleep


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